Case Study - Qualification of an ultra-sensitive Nf-L assay in serum and plasma samples
Neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative disorders, whatever their origin, lead to the accumulation of specific neuronal proteins in cerebrospinal fluid and blood. Neurofilament-Light chain (Nf-L) is one of the 3 subunits, with intermediate (Nf-M) and heavy (Nf-H) chains, constituting the main components of intermediate filaments in neurons. Neurofilaments are involved in axonal growth and maintenance, as well as electric transmission in the nervous sys. While displaying low turnover in non pathological conditions, neurofilaments rise up in cerebrospinal fluid and blood during neuroaxonal injury. The presence of Nf-L in blood has been shown to be a biomarker of differential diagnosis in some neurodegenerative disorders such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Parkinsonian disorders, but also of prognostic value for progression and response to therapy in Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Moreover, it is linked to disease activity in MS, Alzheimer’s, and Huntington’s. In these neurological pathologies, there is a need for targeting early stages of disease and monitoring therapeutic intervention in easily accessible biological fluids. It is then crucial that assays for monitoring this biomarker are robust, accurate, and reproducible, in other terms reliable.
Our team has qualified NF-Light Advantage Kit from Quanterix (ref: 102258) on the SIMOA HD-1 system, evaluating its performance in terms of dynamic range, precision, parallelism and selectivity, lot-to-lot consistency and stability for quantifying Nf-L in both plasma and serum matrices.
